An investigation into the death of a prosecutor, due to testify against Argentinian President Kirchner, confirmed the president was wrong in saying the prosecutor hadn’t drafted an arrest warrant for her. However, there was no plan to execute the warrant.

Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment shortly before he
was due to testify before congress about his probe into an
alleged cover-up by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in
connection with a bombing of a Jewish center in 1994, which
killed 85 people. Critics of the president alleged the prosecutor
was killed rather than committed suicide, prompting a scandal in
Argentina.

News of the draft’s existence was first reported by the
Argentinian newspaper El Clarin, which stated the warrant was
discovered in Nisman’s trash after he was found dead from a
gunshot wound on January 18. The warrant also requested the arrest of
Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, according to the
New York Times.

The Argentinian daily’s initial report sent shockwaves through
the country, especially when Viviana Fein, the investigator in
charge of looking into Nisman’s death, denied on Monday that the
draft existed.

On Tuesday, however, Fein issued a statement confirming the
warrant was there, and said the initial denial was a mistake. She
stressed she wasn’t pressured by the government to hide the
existence of the document, which had been written in June 2014.

According to the dead prosecutor, Kirchner and Timerman attempted
to craft a deal with Iran that would have allowed the accused
Iranians to avoid punishment in exchange for a beneficial trade
deal. As part of his evidence, Nisman complied a nearly 300-page
file of intercepted phone conversations between Argentinian and
Iranian officials, and Nisman claimed the reason the deal fell
apart is because officials were unsuccessful in their efforts to
have Interpol remove the arrest warrants against the implicated
Iranians.

The draft warrant was never submitted. The Argentinian president
is immune from regular criminal prosecution, which means the
document would only have token value and have no legal
consequences for the president. Nisman ultimately decided to call
her to face questions instead.

Nisman's allegations sparked uproar in the country. Prime
Minister Jorge Capitanich called them “crazy, absurd,
illogical, irrational, ridiculous, unconstitutional.” But
opposition politicians and media outlets said the accusations
were very serious and claimed that Nisman had received multiple
threats before his death.

For her part, Kirchner has called Nisman’s allegations
“absurd” and accused the country’s intelligence agencies
of being involved in a plot against her government. She has also
called for a complete overhaul of Argentina's intelligence service.

“They used him while he was alive and then they needed him
dead. It is that sad and terrible,” she wrote in a letter
earlier this month, according to the Buenos Aires Herald.